2021 CaRMS Data Analysis

[bearded frog]

Here's the thread you've all been waiting for! Here's my analysis of the 2021 data, please let me know if you have any questions about these figures or requests for other analysis! Data is CMG only for the first round match unless otherwise specified.

Overall Match Rate over Time

The overall match rate is somewhat noisy and varies by year, but based on the last 13 years there is a (very) small trend towards a lower match rate. The rate of matching to first choice specialty has also very slightly decreased. More significantly, the rate of matching to your first choice program, or in your top 3 programs, has declined by ~8% and ~5% since 2009, respectively.

Data by School of Graduation

Discipline choice

This shows the relative percentage of first choice specialty for each school, with actual number of applicants labelled. This demonstrates the relatively higher proportion of applicants to family medicine at NOSM, and surgery at McGill, for instance.

2021 Match Rate

The following graph shows match outcome by school, again as a percentage of applicants per school, with actual number of applicants labelled. Note the axis starts at 84%.

So, for example, 244 UdeM applicants (~89%) matched in the first round. Of those that didn't match in the first round, 21 did not participate in the second round, 8 applied for the second round, and 5 matched and 3 went unmatched. I found this data very helpful to see what 1st round unmatched applicants do. The question of deferring graduation vs 2nd round has been a hot topic, and it's clear that not participating in the 2nd round is more popular at some schools vs others. Could it be that UdeM or UofT may be more supportive of graduation deferrals vs Manitoba or McMaster?

Match Rates Over Time

I went back over the last 5 years of data to see if there were any trends in individual school match rates. They are on separate graphs by geographical area for ease of visibility. For comparison's sake the Y axis scale is the same. Spoiler: I don't think there's much in the way of any clear trend.

No obvious trends, but it seems if a school has a particularly bad year they bounce back pretty well the following year, except for Sask in 2019/2020 (and 2021 it seems). Time will tell if Western bounces back or we can extrapolate the 2020/2021 trend to a match rate of 76% in 2023

Matched Discipline Rank by School

This data shows which specialty matched applicants ended up in, in the first round match, as a proportion of total matched applicants. Note the scale starts at 70%.

We can see that U of T had the highest match rate to first choice disciplines (irregardless of program location) compared to Sherbrooke. Interestingly 3 people matched to their 5th or lower choice of specialty!

Matched Program Rank by School

This data shows which program rank matched applicants ended up matching to in the first round (regardless of specialty), as a proportion of total matched applicants. Note that this scale starts at 0%.

Seems these days roughly 55% match to their top rank, and U of T and NOSM did particularity well at ~65%.

Destination Location by School

There have been a couple discussions recently about home school and home province advantage when it comes to matching with CaRMS, so the following charts show where people end up, by individual school and then by province.

Not sure why the second one is so big lol. Generally home school and home province preference is a thing, although schools within provinces are more incestuous, and obviously the francophone schools tend to intermingle.

Data by Specialty

Specialty Applications

The following graphs show the distribution of applicants among each specialty, with cumulative values of applicants who only applied to that specialty, applied to that specialty as their first choice but also backed up/parallel planned with a different specialty, or who applied to it as a back up/parallel plan (ie not their first choice specialty). They are presented as three separate charts as the wildly varying scale ie ~2000 family medicine vs. 7 in neuropathology.

Some interesting things jump out here - half of all IM and FM applicants are applying not as their first choice. To better see it in terms of percentage here is each specialty presented as proportions of applicants only applying to it, applying as first of multiple applications, or as not their first choice:

It seems that radiology, cardiac surg, ortho, gen surg, IM, anatomical pathology??, FM and medical microbiology?? are the most "do or die" specialties. I also ran the numbers for change in application numbers for each specialty since last year but it's essentially the same results as change in competitiveness, see below.

Specialty Competitiveness

The way I've previously defined "competitiveness" for a specialty is the ratio of first choice applicants to spots. It's not perfect but I think it's the best we can do with the data available. A specialty is more compeditive if there are a much higher proportion of applicants to spots, whereas an noncompetitive specialty has more spots than applicants. Obviously this doesn't account for a significant number of applicants as a second choice specialty, who may be well qualified if their first choice was even more compeditive.

Below is the 2021 ratio of applicants to spots, blue is 1st choice applicants and red is total applicants.

As you can see ENT was the most compeditive this year with more than 2 applicants for every spot, and general pathology the least with 1 first choice applicant for 7 spots. When you consider total applicants peds neuro is the most compeditive, which is a surprise. Once again derm, optho, ER, plastics, urology, are in the top tier this year, with special guest peds neuro. The following graph shows the percent change in competitiveness ratio (using 1st choice applicants to quota) in 2021 vs 2020:

For some reason medical genetics was more than 300% more compeditive this year, and nuclear medicine was way down. Urology, ortho, ENT, heme path, and PMR had signficant jumps. I guess covid scared people off public health, and cardiac surgery and gen path also dropped off. Most disciplines are consistent.

Alternatively, you can look at competitiveness of specialties by the proportion of first ranked applicants who actually match to that specialty. Here's the chart of percentage of first ranked applicants who matched in order.

So all applicants who ranked nuclear medicine first matched to it, and, as an extreme outlier, none did to FM + EM. Just under half matched ENT, which correlates with the 2 first choice applicants for every spot above.

Other Thoughts

IMG Applicants and Match Rate

This isn't in a chart or graph, but when I was Table 6 (for first round of the match) I noted that of IMGs, 2042 registered for CaRMS, 1746 submitted an application, but only 1184 "participated". I assume the remainder didn't get an interview or otherwise did not submit a rank list? Also interesting to note that of the IMG applicants who "participated" only 154 were current year graduates, the remainder being previous year graduates. I always assumed a larger proportion of the thousands of IMGs to be current graduates. Current year IMG applicants have a much higher match rate in the first round, of those 154, 71% matched (110), compared to 24% of previous graduates (251 of 1032). I wish we had more data on match rate on year of graduation, but in general if you're an IMG I hope you match the first time around. For context the CMG first round match rate for current year graduates was 94% (2696/2854) and previous graduates was 82% (50/61). I'm assuming here that if you don't match and defer graduation then you are counted as a current year graduate but I cannot confirm.

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That's all I've got. Again, let me know if there's any other questions I can try and answer with the data.

[bearded frog]

Bump to say that I have edited my OP to finish my analysis.

[who_knows]

bearded frog, very interesting and useful material, thank you! I was wondering how the cancellation of visiting electives affected out-of-province/school matches. The past year was an unusual one, I wonder whether the 2021 match differs from 2020 and earlier matches.

[Redpill]

Is there a joke I'm missing about Western University being grouped with the western provinces?

Good analysis, I liked the way you chose to organize the information into graphs.

Doesn't look like much is changing, aside from the odd Peds-Neuro appearance. The competitive stuff stayed competitive, the non-competitive stuff is still straightforward to get into.

[bearded frog]

12 hours ago, Redpill said:

Is there a joke I'm missing about Western University being grouped with the western provinces?

Oops no, excel mistake lol.

12 hours ago, who_knows said:

I was wondering how the cancellation of visiting electives affected out-of-province/school matches. The past year was an unusual one, I wonder whether the 2021 match differs from 2020 and earlier matches.

CaRMS gives the med school --> residency school distribution but I had to do the province distribution manually and it took a long time so hopefully just the school distribution change will suffice lol. [see below] The following graph shows the percentage of CaRMS applicants at each school that matched at a different school for residency, over the last three years. (I went back to 2019 to ensure that we had an entirely pre-covid year to compare to). So Queen's consistently has the most applicants leave for a different school, and Manitoba/Laval have the most who stay at their own school.

As you can see. There isn't a consistent trend across all schools, but the majority did have less away matches in 2021 vs 2020. Compared to 2019, only the Quebec schools, Sask, and UBC had more away matches.

[AB27]

Cardiac surgery had a higher 1st choice match rate than general? Is this normal?

[bearded frog]

Never-mind, I figured out an easier way to look at distribution between provinces:

As you can see QC and ON were rock solid for the most part, and basically eliminated the changes in the schools in these provinces (Quebec having a overall low out-of-province match due to francophone schools I assume). Seems like most of the change in movement among schools in ON and QC at least were due to changes within province and not out of it.

[bearded frog]

5 minutes ago, AB27 said:

Cardiac surgery had a higher 1st choice match rate than general? Is this normal?

In 2021 the ratio of first choice applicants to spots was 1 (11 1st choice applicants for 11 spots). This is actually less than previous, but cardiac surgery is fairly noisy as there are relatively few spots so even a few more applicants makes big changes. Here's the past 21 years of cardiac surgery for you:

As you can see, since 2006 it's trended right around 1, which is what it was this year, 2020 was actually an outlier with almost 2 applicants for every spot (17 applicants for 9 spots).

[Persephone]

On 7/8/2021 at 3:36 PM, bearded frog said:

Could it be that UdeM or UofT may be more supportive of graduation deferrals vs Manitoba or McMaster?

At Mac if you want support for not matching in the current cycle (it's a program called "extension to clerkship" which involves 16 weeks of electives) you have to participate and rank at least one program in the 2nd round. So that's why you don't see anyone opting out. Some people might surreptitiously throw their second round match in order to guarantee they can defer graduation by turning down an interview and sending regrets to one program and then only ranking that one program. This is not what admin wants you to be doing though.

[bearded frog]

48 minutes ago, Persephone said:

At Mac if you want support for not matching in the current cycle (it's a program called "extension to clerkship" which involves 16 weeks of electives) you have to participate and rank at least one program in the 2nd round. So that's why you don't see anyone opting out. Some people might surreptitiously throw their second round match in order to guarantee they can defer graduation by turning down an interview and sending regrets to one program and then only ranking that one program. This is not what admin wants you to be doing though.

Ah yes, I've heard that's a thing. In my experience the advisor at Mac cared more about Mac's overall match rates instead of your personal goals (encouraging me to back up with family even though I'd rather reapply the following year if not matching).

[Persephone]

1 hour ago, bearded frog said:

Ah yes, I've heard that's a thing. In my experience the advisor at Mac cared more about Mac's overall match rates instead of your personal goals (encouraging me to back up with family even though I'd rather reapply the following year if not matching).

Yeah it can be the right advice for some people, but backing up with family in the very first application cycle isn't a one-size fits all approach.

[Tullius]

On 7/10/2021 at 2:21 PM, bearded frog said:

Ah yes, I've heard that's a thing. In my experience the advisor at Mac cared more about Mac's overall match rates instead of your personal goals (encouraging me to back up with family even though I'd rather reapply the following year if not matching).

I think Canadian medical schools in general have an incentive to prioritize their own stats over the career goals of their students.  Not hard to see this either, during the carms talks they give their students.